


Circle Games

by Anonanonsir



Category: Enderal (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2016-10-11
Packaged: 2018-08-21 23:30:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8264437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonanonsir/pseuds/Anonanonsir
Summary: Enderal fic taking place in the immediate aftermath of the third Black Stone quest, almost entirely OC internal/contemplative. Angst and more angst with a side of angst.





	

**Content Advisory: descriptions of death/violence, brief language, references to abuse**

* * *

 

_It will be alright. I promise._

He’d said it to his sister as they huddled amidst the rocks beyond the old wall. He’d whispered it over and over again into her ear, as if it could drown out their mother’s sobbing cries or the coarse laughter of the men from the temple. His arms wrapped round her, crushing her against him so tightly that nothing would ever be able to pry her away.

But he hadn’t been strong enough. They’d found the hiding place, they’d ripped her from his arms as if it were nothing. He’d screamed and clawed and bit and they had laughed. They’d struck him with their hard, heavy fists and when he fell, hauled him up by the collar, choking like a noose. But he was used to beatings, to large, grabbing hands. He slipped out of his shirt, like he’d done so many times when his father cornered him, and he’d bolted, barebacked for the trees. He heard his sister shriek his name, terrified, pleading, and he heard the curses and the heavy boots pounding just behind him, and he kept running.

*******

“You worry too much”, he’d laughed at Sirius in the fetid darkness of the ship’s hold.

“One of us has to!”

But the hardest part was past now; they had made it onto the ship and all that was left was to wait and sneak ashore.

Everything would be different then.

It was a strange thought. A strange feeling. In Ostian he’d never looked farther ahead than his next meal, and that was far from certain. Excitement, hope even, were as things wondrous and unfamiliar to him, and they went to his head like strong wine. It was true for both of them, but Sirius had always been the more grounded of the two, measured and thoughtful where Eska was all impulse and action, quicksilver.

He gave Sirius a gentle shove. “It’ll be fine. I promise.”

_I promise._

*******

The pathetic thing wasn’t that he kept saying it. The pathetic thing was that he believed it. Every time.

He’d promised Ryneus. Standing there in filtered sunlight of the cavern, he’d told him it would be alright. He’d promised him it would be alright. The boy had trusted him. And now he was dead.

He hadn’t meant for it to happen. He hadn’t meant for any of it to happen. But intentions were meaningless – that’s what Jespar had said – the only things that mattered were results, and the result was that the boy was dead, and he had caused it just as surely as if he’d put an arrow through his heart.  

The wind out of the south stirred the flames on the little pyre, whipping them skyward. The charred, crumpled body seemed so terribly small. Small, and flame-eaten and painfully familiar.

He tried not to see it, tried not to remember, he stared instead at the sand and the waves and tried to think of Ostian, of the harbor front and the reek of fish and the feel of sun and salt on bare skin. But a lull in the wind caused the smoke to billow and all at once he was choking, the taste of ash and charred meat filling his mouth and throat. He twisted aside, stumbling to his knees, retching into the sand.

The smoke burned his eyes, and through the stinging tears he could see the crosses again, flames licking up them like huge, hungry tongues, making skin sizzle and hiss, like meat on a griddle. He shut his eyes, but he could still see them, the smallest one, fashioned in grotesque miniature of the others, and the figure hanging from it, its slight limbs shrunken and twisted with fire, the face muscles partially burned away, letting the jaw fall slack in a final, tortured scream.

Then the south wind picked up once more, driving the smoke down the beach to the north and he could breath again. He gasped, sucking the clean air into his lungs. The breeze felt strangely sharp on his skin, his face was wet. He was crying. His stomach gave a last, convulsive heave, tearing at half-healed injuries, but there was nothing to bring up; he hadn’t eaten since Ark.  

He did not try to rise, sinking back instead onto the sand, swiping a sleeve across his eyes. He had what he’d come for, but he wouldn’t leave yet. He didn’t know how Endralian burials worked; Jespar had explained it once, but he only half remembered. He’d been dazed and feverish and scared out of his wits at the time. But he did not want to leave the boy alone. He could keep that promise a little longer at least.

He reached into his pack, fumbling anxiously until, with a mixture of revulsion and relief, his fingers closed around Ryneus’ necklace. He’d done the same thing half a dozen times already, each time imagining that he’d dropped it in the sand, in the cave, among the houses as he’d looked for firewood, but the momentary panic passed and withdrew his hand, wiping it compulsively against his breeks. He felt contaminated, complicit. Because he needed it. He hated it and he needed it, and it was that need which had killed Ryneus, which had nearly killed Calia, killed Adila, killed Jespar, only this time there was no veiled figure to wipe away the consequences of his failings.

Ryneus had been a child. He hadn’t wanted vengeance or justice or power, he hadn’t wanted to overturn the laws of life and death, all he’d wanted was to be loved and safe. He was a child, he’d needed _help_ , but Eska had needed the stone, and so he’d dragged him into the middle of an impossible situation without a thought for consequences. He’d let him die, just like he’d let his family die, just like Sirius.

But he had the stone. The third and final, the last piece of the puzzle. That was what they’d said, wasn’t it? That this would be it, this would be enough? If he could just get the stone to the Temple, then it would be alright, it would be over, no one else would have to get hurt? If he just did what they asked, if he completed this task, if he gave them what they wanted, then it would be enough, wouldn’t it? They wouldn’t ask any more of him? If he just….

He grew suddenly very still. That had been the litany of his childhood. The unconscious prayer which had accompanied every task, every action, every day.  If he was just quiet enough, if he was quick enough, if he was careful enough, if he was good enough, maybe _this_ time Father would be pleased, maybe this time he wouldn’t be angry, wouldn’t shout, maybe this time he wouldn’t use the cane, maybe this time he’d settle for bruises, maybe this time he wouldn’t want to see blood.

But it had never been enough. _He_ had never been enough. Not then and not now. Calia was rigtht, it was a joke. The biggest joke since Starfall. He had always been too weak, too slow, too stupid. And no matter what he did, no matter how hard he fought, that was never going to change. Life was full of Cycles, not all of them world-ending, but just as inescapable.

He could go back to Ark, to the Temple, he could bring them the stone, but it wouldn’t make any difference. There would always be something missing, something wrong. It would never be enough.  

He stayed on the beach until the light began to fail and the rising tide began to suck at the edges of the pyre. His body, when he finally summoned the will to rise, felt heavy and stiff. He removed a scroll from his pack, its curling edges torn and creased from its recent confinement, scanning the runes in the dying light. In a few hours the tide would overtake the pyre, claiming the bones and the ashes and washing the sand clean. It was little enough, but it was the best he could offer.

The beach around him began to distort, to blur; he could no longer feel the ground under his feet or the air on his face or even the reassuring constant of his own weight, and then came the single moment of pure terror as the world dissolved – he would never, as long as he lived get used to that – before he came slamming down on the stones of the Temple courtyard.

He fell forward onto his face, gasping at the pain knifing through his side. Blazes, why did he never remember that wound until it was too late? He screwed his eyes shut shut, fighting to slow his breathing. Gods help him, he didn’t want to get up. He could have lain there on the courtyard stones and never moved again. But he could already sense the disturbance around him, as if he were a stone dropped into the middle of a calm pool. His arrival had been marked and he was damned if he would give them the satisfaction of seeing him break.

He pushed himself to his feet. The courtyard was chilly compared to the Duneland beach and bathed in the last, lingering light of the evening, but for once he did not feel the cold; as he trudged up the steps – why in blazes were there so many steps? – to find Merrayil at the Beacon, he could not seem to feel anything at all. He was numb.  

“By the Righteous Path!” the other man greeted him in surprise, taking him in in one swift glance. “Have you been to the curarium? You don’t look well at all.”

Eska had not expected that and he was at a loss, recoiling from the old scholar’s concern as if from a blow. Instead of responding, he reached into his pack and pulled out the amulet, holding it between them as if it were a shield. Sometimes kindness could be more shattering than the harshest of words, and he was so very near to breaking.

Behind his monocle, the half-Aeterna’s eyes lit up with excitement and no little relief, “Oh, this is excellent! How did you find it?”

“Does it matter?” The retort was flat and terse and he was sorry he said it. Normally he appreciated the other man’s quiet distress at his reports, it was somehow reassuring in a way that Arantheal’s cold zeal was not. Arantheal looked at death and saw glory and rightness, Merrayil looked at it and saw grief and pain and all that was human about it. But if he tried to explain what had happened, he would fall to pieces.

“Oh.” Merrayil looked at him again, but if he saw more than exhaustion in the young, dust streaked face before him, he did not press. “No. No, of course not. I shall get to work immediately. But you…. You really _should_ have someone look at you.”

Eska nodded – anything to satisfy him and get away – and turned to go. Back down the stairs, across the courtyard. He kept his eyes down. He passed a group of novices and their whispers seemed to follow him all the way to the doors of the quarters above the Scuola. _Disgrace. Unworthy. Mistake._

 _Urchin Child_ , the Truchessa’s voice taunted as he pushed through the doors and ducked down the corridor away from the warmth and bard song in the hall. _You know nothing_. People had been telling him the truth his whole life, he’d just never wanted to listen.

 _You’re like a dog!_ Calia’s voice this time. _A joke!_ He slammed the door at the end of the hall, the little room which they let him use when he needed somewhere to sleep. He threw down his pack and stripped off his armor, gagging at the stink of smoke and meat on his clothes. His tunic was damp with fresh blood where the wound in his side had broken open again and he felt laughter bubbling up in his throat, thin and trembling and faintly hysterical. He crushed the back of his hand against his mouth, fighting it down. Adila might just kill him yet. Wouldn’t that be fucking poetic?

He peeled off his tunic, his boots, his breeks. _What have you got that I can’t get from some undercity whore?_ Jespar wanted to know. _Pathless Nehrimese gutter trash._ He hadn’t said it, he hadn’t needed to.

There was a basin and a pitcher of water on the dresser and he set them down, kneeling naked in the middle of the floor. _Child of sin_ , his father spat. He splashed the water over his face, his arms. _Useless. Pathetic. Ungrateful_. But it was no good, the smell had soaked into his skin, his hair. He scrubbed, scratched, his fingers came away bloody. _Bastard. Bastard! BASTARD!_ He could taste it in the back of his throat, like home, like nightmares. _Look what you made me do!_

He broke. Quietly – he’d learned the art as a child – one hand clutching at his mouth to stifle the sobs, but all at once, crumpling forward, his tenuous hold on himself giving way completely. He wept as if his heart were tearing to pieces. And it had. Again and again, one loss and one failure after another. And softly, beneath the smothered cries, he heard the Veiled Woman’s voice, as she’d spoken in the cave, so smooth it could almost be mocking: _Is this not better?_


End file.
